What Makes a Strong Person?

What makes a strong person? What does it mean to be considered a strong and powerful individual? On the face of it our expectations (at least in the so called “western world”) are often shaped by what we see in media, and yes by that I do also mean in the news press. I started thinking about this last night as I sat watching England vs Australia game in the women’s football world cup 2023. 

It was an exciting game, plenty of skill and determination on both sides and resulted in a 3-1 win for England (being an expat living in NZ I was doubly happy that England beat our local rivals!). I then found myself thinking about the way some of the players were quite aggressive in their reactions to decisions that didn't fo their way (tackles, free kicks etc). On occasion it seemed that they were on the verge of violence in the game and that started me thinking that because professional football has historically been a male sport (who are historically the most violent of our lovely species) the women who I had just watched play were aping the behaviour of men in the game and that maybe mine (and their) concept of what makes a strong player has been skewed by male stereotypes. Maybe these supremely skilled footballers that I had just watched poor their hearts and souls into the game for the last 90 minutes were just copying male behaviour because that’s what our society expects from a footballer!

Or maybe I’m full of sh*t and it’s my own biases and prejudices that have steered me towards this thinking and that actually what I had seen was human beings pushing themselves beyond their limits in a strive to excel, and that this will occasionally result in frustration manifesting in a physical and possibly aggressive way?

So, what does this mean to the question that I started this post with what makes a strong person? Well maybe it has nothing to do with what physically manifests but rather what happens in our minds. In the eighties a genre of film was created that embedded in our social consciousness what a hero is.

The Action Movie.

Cue Arnie, Bruce and Sylvester all beating up hundreds of bad guys, toting big guns and racking up huge body counts all while dropping cool catchphrases that have become forever engraved in pop culture!

This has shaped our concept of what a hero is so much that we have gyms in every town, exercise programs to get the perfect abs and biceps and a confrontational approach to any disagreement that says, “you disagree with me so I must destroy you” (figuratively in most cases). I’m being a little silly, but you get my meaning, when we think about our own self esteem and the people we aspire to be we (I’m speaking as a male here) we usually think of a fit, healthy sculpted person who is confident, rich, and probably skilled in some form of martial art!

But is this what strong really is, and is this concept shaped by our culture and societal norms, because our society is not static but evolves and grows over time. For example, if we lifted a citizen of America or Britain out of WW2 and into our modern age would they behave the way we would expect anyone from now to behave. How different would they be from us? And what would they consider to be a strong person? They lived through one of the most terrifying experiences of modern history and this will have shaped how they viewed life in general, how they dealt with stress, pressure, and the challenges of everyday living. But how would they handle internet stalking, the house price crisis or climate change? And would they have the personal fortitude to overcome life’s pressures and remain positive and balanced. Is it fair (or right) to compare how we think to how people in the past thought?

Again, this is one of those roundabout diatribe’s that goes full circle without answering the question. Or does it, maybe a strong person is someone that recognises their own personal weaknesses daily and chooses to try and overcome them. Its not about how successful they are but more about trying, because the opposite of strength is weakness, and if you have a weakness that you can do something about and you try, well then that makes you strong!

This post is another example of my constant obsession with time and how absolutely everything is impacted by the passage of this capricious bugger. Every single experience, every minute or second of elapsed time alters who we are on an individual level, and comparing ourselves to another person, group or even nation is irrelevant because they are not us, here, now. And now doesn’t exist!